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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   38180 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Tyler Robinson, Kirk shooter, has been caught after a family friend turned him in

The markings on the bullets described by authorities indicate that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was steeped in online culture and included references to the Antifa , or the anti-fascist, movement. A fired shell casing was inscribed with “notices bulges OwO what’s this?” - a reference to a “copypasta” - a piece of text that is repeated over and over again, often to troll people online.

Authorities say one unfired casing had the words “Hey fascist, catch!” and three down arrows - a common symbol used to represent the anti-fascist movement. A second casing had the lyrics to a song “Bella Ciao” inscribed on it. The song honours WWII-era partisans of the Italian resistance who fought Nazi Germany.

The third unfired casing was inscribed with the words “If you read this, you are gay lmao” - again an apparent reference to online trolling humour.

Parents, keep your kids away from Discord. Will be interesting to see if this guy is a true believer or just ragebaiting.

Doing a quick 4plebs search, the “notices bulge” phrase is heavily overrepresented in the Ukrainian war threads but seldom appears elsewhere (where “bulges” appear on the frontlines map). I haven’t seen this copypasta in the wild in a very long time, so I found it extremely odd that he would put it on his gun. It’s not exactly a pro-trans message, and nothing else indicates that transgenderism had a role here, and he doesn’t appear to have dysphoria. The spooks who engage in the Ukraine/Russia threads often don’t have a tasteful grasp of how to use copypastas or which have fallen out of fashion, so I wonder if he picked this up in his online participation in pro-Ukrainian / anti-Russian spaces. This would make sense given his other interests: an antifascist song, Helldivers, an anti-fascist message. I’m not implying that he was groomed by the Feds, but I would bet my money that he was in some online ecosystem where fascism was demonized and which Feds participated in.

Does anyone here recall seeing a “notices bulge” meme in the wild lately? Do modern trans people use it?

Does anyone here recall seeing a “notices bulge” meme in the wild lately? Do modern trans people use it?

It's a really common furry/anti-furry thing, generally focused around M/M (or, more rarely, M/F) roleplay norms. By convention the person noticing the bulge is usually the femmy one. Given the demographics of the furry roleplay sphere some of the M/F stuff is probably trans people, but the specifics of the joke misalign enough to what most trans people are looking for that probably less than you'd expect. See this for a relatively sfw joke about it.

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